Two Hares
Notes on the green washing of the 'nature remedy' - Plus What to Look for in Spring - a brand new course for March
I’m out early. After running the Dawn Chorus zoom writing club at seven am and seeing a sunrise smear of gold along the horizon from my desk I want to get into the fresh air and apricate in the sun, feel its warmth on me, let it energise me. I have to be back in 40 minutes as the builder’s are putting a new kitchen in, finally and I’ll have decisions to make on plug sockets and backboards. My whole life feels like a clutter of different things I must do to make progress in all the areas of my life and yet, at the same time a strange inability to focus or get anything done is upon me.
I know what works to unstick me when I get like this. It’s being outside. It is a mile of walking down to the river and back, it is the letting go, the feeling of one part of my brain being overtaken by another - the part of my brain that must adhere to the life of a human is taken over by the part of my brain that is free to react instinctively to the world. As I turn and head home, away from the river, swerving back around the contour of a fresh ploughed field, two hares appear, completely oblivious to me. They chase each other, zig zagging, kicking back, sailing over the deep ruts of fresh plough lines. I feel something pulled up from my stomach into my chest that is hard to describe or define; it rises, it is excitement, thrill, a kind of ecstasy to see this, to be present in their world, and to know that their world is also my world.
When I get home I think about what I could do to make the moment, this fairly ordinary, and yet extraordinary moment, less of a passive act of interaction. I jot down notes in the book I’ve been using to keep a list of birds I’ve seen this year. I’ve been thinking, lately, about how I use my interactions with nature, whether I am using the wild world to serve my own purposes, whether this might be very typically human to see the interactions with nature from a curing or healing perspective. My connection to nature is very much a feeling of coming back to my animal self, something based around how my physical body reacts, how the sensory nature of nature seems to seep over my crackling, ever fizzing brain and soothe it.
The idea of nature as remedy or cure is not a new one, but it seems to be becoming more commercialised. I am thinking about how when we seek a cure from nature we are placing the wounds of our lives next to the first aid box of nature and are expecting the needle and thread, the dressings and antiseptic to leap straight out and fix us.
I look up the etymology of the word. Remedy: a medicine or treatment for a disease or injury. In the 12th century remedy meant: counteracting sin or evil of any kind; cure for a vice or temptation. I can’t help but feel that some of our reach for a nature remedy is a kind of off setting of our ecological sins. We seek the connection to nature, but somehow we don’t want to put the work in to sustain or protect that nature. Perhaps the wound next to the first aid kit is the wrong analogy, maybe we are in fact patients in counselling refusing to address our own behaviours as part of the healing process.
There is hard evidence on the benefits of being outside and experiencing nature as an aid to maintaining good mental health. This Guardian article by Sam Pyrah in 2023 sums it up well, and goes further in exploring what the answer to the brain-brutal modernity of cities and towns may be The Nature Cure: How time spent outdoors transforms our memory, imagination and logic. Because this is the thing: while we continue to build identikit houses and landscaped ‘natural’ places, we are not addressing the route causes for the disconnect to nature that leads to plastic lawns, and trees being chopped down to protect cars from bird poo. Rather than making sure that cities and towns are nature friendly, genuinely nature friendly with places for nature to exist beside us, and rather than creating a base for a true connection to nature, we seek to make connection to nature an experience you might buy, or a pill you might take. Who can forget disaster that was the Marble Arch Mound. Samantha Walton articulates the funny-if-it-wasn’t-so-sad nature of greenwashing commercialism of ‘the nature cure’ in this Wellcome collection article: In Search of the Nature Cure.
I have seen the removing of nature to create a human centric version of nature in real time too: I have watched a small copse of beech cut down, the boggy ground drained, replaced with a gravel bed, a landscaped path, new saplings planted and woodland animal sculptures created from the felled trees, to create a ‘nature path’ through an estate. The icing on the cake being the laminated board telling people what nature they might see there.
What I know is that I am rooted in the rural, and when I feel my body in the environment, when I am aware of how it reacts, how I react to the physical experience of nature, I am also seeking a kind of belonging - this reaction is linking me to my species ancestors, something that goes way past my farming ancestry and into something deeper, the animal that we are under all the societal conditioning. We are a species that evolved to be hunter gatherers, to be long distance walkers, to be tuned to our environment. Our survival skills - our flight or fight responses- are pre set to that evolutionary track, which means when we place ourselves away from that, into offices and towns and streets and cars and computers, the ability of our brains to understand what is happening around us, and whether there is need to flee or fight, is compromised, and this must manifest in terms of poor mental health. The disconnect grows, the sense of looming non-belonging with it.
Nature is not a pill you can swallow. It takes some work to find the connection, but at the same time, that work can’t be grinding targets and conquering, it must be small work, open work, the sort of work you do when you let the quiet in and don’t cover it up, the sort of work that opens your wound to the air. You must be patient and you must be aware. Nature cannot be synthesised, it cannot be sanitised.
While I am writing, the feet of a jackdaw appear on the guttering above my window. The bird leans forward, hanging almost upside down to look in at me. I imagine myself from its perspective - crouched over my computer, lamp lit at my desk. As I look at it, its black feathers are lifted by the breeze. We make eye contact - green eye to yellow eye - then it takes flight.
New Course Klaxon!
What to Look for in Spring
Starting March 6th 2024
What to Look for in Spring: Writing the World Awakening
What can we learn from nature in Spring? How can we write about it? Where do we exist in the natural world and how do we tie that world to our own lived experiences, physical and emotional?
Spring is a time of re-awakening, a time when the skies begin to lighten, the birds begin to sing and the world begins to be reborn. It’s a time to reflect on our own beginnings and rebirths, and how that is reflected in the world around us. In this four week self directed email course we’ll be exploring nature in poetry and prose using natural, historical, archaeological and folklore themes. From the first yellowing of catkins, the first dawn chorus, to easter rituals, feasts and fables you’ll be encouraged to find inspiration through a series of directed activities aimed at connecting you to your environment, and writing prompts based on published works, museum artefacts and film.
How does it work?
If you are a paid subscriber to Notes from the Margin you will receive the course through paywalled posts and you will be able to access the Notes from the Margin Facebook page. I will be popping into the group to moderate and there will be a few extra treats in store for subscribers.
If you choose to access the course as a four week self directed email course you’ll receive a notes bundle on Wednesdays and Fridays direct to your email inbox for four weeks. The notes will include resources, writing prompts, directed activities and inspiration as well as notes on published works to help guide the crafting of your own prose and poetry.
Who is this course for?
This course is open to writers of any experience, who want to find new ways to write about themselves, and/or nature.
What sort of writing will I be doing?
In this course we’ll be exploring poetry and creative non fiction, or narrative non fiction.
How many hours a week do I need to set aside?
You’ll need a good hour or two per notes bundle (two to four hours a week) to benefit fully from this course, but don’t despair if you are strapped for time as there is no homework and no marking, this is a course that you can do at your own pace.
Is there a Facebook Group with this Course?
There is a facebook group attached to Notes from the Margin, where paid subscribers can interact, share drafts and receive encouragement.
Who is Wendy Pratt?
Wendy Pratt is an author, poet and editor. She is author of five poetry collections. Her latest collection of poetry, Blackbird Singing at Dusk will be published by Nine Arches in autumn 2024. Her previous collection of poetry, When I Think of My Body as a Horse, won the Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet competition in 2020. Her narrative non fiction nature memoir, The Ghost Lake was long listed for the Nan Shepherd prize and will be published by The Borough Press, a division of Harper Collins, in August 2024. She is also the founder and editor in chief of Spelt magazine, a full colour print magazine that aims to celebrate and validate the rural experience.
Discounts and Bursaries
I have one bursary place for this course for writers on low incomes who would not be able to access the course otherwise. I will not ask you to prove this, this system relies on trust. Just email me at wendyprattfreelancewriter@gmail.com
Investment
FREE for paid subscribers to my Notes from the Margin substack community
A Notes from the Margin subscription is just £5 per month, or £50 a year (saving you £10)
You can subscribe here: Notes from the Margin
For non subscribers – £25
You can book your place on this self guided course here:
Love this post - this idea nature can fix us is in danger of becoming damaging as again it is us “using nature”’l is it. As you said we need to think as partnership, connections, the links - not just us using the world again. Thanks for getting my brain working!
Wonderful and feel every word of this.